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85 per cent of the IT leaders questioned believe the cloud is reducing their organisations’ control over IT. While in-house IT services are managed by six established IT service management (ITSM) processes, cloud-based services only have an average of four.

80 per cent of CIOs do not apply the same comprehensive ITSM processes in the cloud as they do for their in-house IT services, the report found.

“The maturity of cloud services has started to improve, but it is still leagues away from where it needs to be,” said Paul Cash, managing partner at Fruition Partners. “There has to be a recognition that the need for rigorous management is greater, not less, in the cloud.

“Quite simply, CIOs cannot blindly trust that public cloud services will work flawlessly and be delivered perfectly at all times. The more responsibility CIOs hand over to providers, without ensuring that established ITSM principles are applied, the more they open themselves up to blame if one of those services fails.

“CIOs should still be managing cloud services internally, rather than abdicating responsibility to the provider. Otherwise they risk losing control, and increasing both cost and risk to themselves and the business.”

The report’s authors advised that simple steps like implementing a list of sanctioned public cloud services can help to cut down on shadow IT and reduce risk.